Conspiracy Theories, Skepticism, and Critical Thinking

Webster has established that she has a very low opinion of the Russian people. Not that she opposes Russia the state, but that the Russian people are prone to violence and drunkenness, and incapable of modern civilization. Hey, her words not mine. When we keep this mind, we recognize “ the fearful danger of taking from him the only restraints he knew—respect for God and the Czar” What follows that line is one of the more honest arguments a fascist conspiracy theorist like Nesta Webster has ever offered. She asks “ Was the Imperial Government, then, to tolerate the campaign of insubordination and of militant atheism conducted by the Nihilists from 1866 onwards?” I dislike rhetorical questions as an argument tactic which makes reading these books especially frustrating. Here Webster could make the same point by not phrasing it like a coward, instead of asking she should write, “ The Imperial Government does not have to tolerate a campaign of insubordination and militant atheism by th...

This week’s section is an odd one and Webster is starting to lose her thread. I’ve noticed in the eight conspiracy books that we’ve read so far, that as the books go on the author loses the ability to stay on target. The only exception to this observation was Cooper’s book, because that was never on target to begin with. Webster is just bouncing around too much. She’s been confining herself to one time period per chapter, that’s good, but now we’re mixing revolutions between Russian and France and it’s getting a bit weird. We get, right out of the gate in chapter VIII, some anti-Semitism, “ the Marxist synagogue’ as Bakunin described it… ” Obviously, we’re returning to Webster’s crush, but we aren’t citing Bakunin. We’re citing someone else’s work on the history of Anarchism. It’s a small gripe but she has this pattern of citing what someone else said someone said. Here we have Ettore Zoccoli telling us that Bakunin called the Internationale a Marxist Synagogue. She should just cite Ba...

 Plato believed that Democracy was the worst form of government. It was rule by the mob, the uneducated masses who didn’t know what the best for them was. Aristotle would later correct this generality by differentiating between Democracy and Anarchy. Democracy was fine, because it had a purpose whereas Anarchy was a corruption because that is when the mob rules for the individuals’ sake. In much the same what at Monarchy can be good because it just means that a single person, the king, rules for the people; whereas Tyranny is a corruption because the king rules for themselves. Fascism has no pure or good form; because it just means that the state serves itself. Webster is going to make the case that Socialism and Anarchism are different conceptions of the state that are both bad, but different bad. Webster’s Fascism is going to be at odds for both because not only does the state need to exist for its own sake, it also needs to exist at the expense of the multitude to benefit the po...

Nesta Webster is a woman. Nesta Webster is a writer. Nesta Webster is writing at a time when women in the UK could vote only if they were over the age of 30, were property owners/renters of a location of a certain value (or married to person that does), and not subject to any kind of legal incapacity, or were graduates of a voting constituency. At the same period of time, men, had to be 21 unless they were veterans of WWI in which case they could vote at 19. Webster is writing at a time when women are the subservient class in the UK. Where is Webster going to land on the equality question? Well, she’s not going to land in a good place, that’s for sure. Webster is going to take the contradictory position that all women like her—Phyllis Schlafly, Margaret Thatcher, Megyn Kelley—women should stay home and be wives and mothers; but we should ignore the fact that Webster is not any of those things and is telling us how we should think and act. We’re at another revolution in France and Webs...

 We’ve arrived at the Franco-Prussian war, a war that Webster has told us is the German’s fault because they tricked Napolean III into declaring it. That Bismark is a crafty one. She wants to implicate Marx because he’s a Jew, a German, and a Socialist; but it’s going to take a lot of work to do that. Perhaps, somewhere, there exists some letters or a manuscript where Marx and Engles were all about the German conquering of France. Maybe they’ve written a book about how France sucks, and really the best thing for the working classes is the elimination of all those extra vowels the French use. That would take the research of a proper historian, luckily for us, Webster isn’t a proper historian. Pay attention to what she does here. She writes that the “ French branch of the internationale in London actually denounced him as an agent of Bismarck. ” Our first evidence is an accusation by someone in London. We have no citation for this. “ Marx wrote to Engles on August 3, 1870, saying th...

 A new chapter begins, this one titled “The Revolution of 1871.” Every chapter, for those of you not following along, has a little indication of the subjects being talked about underneath the chapter titles. We know that this chapter is going to discuss “The Franco-Prussian War” — Internationalism — Karl Marx, pan-Germanist —The Commune — Conflict between Marx and Bakunin — and the End of the Internationale. The last entry is odd, because we just did that in the chapter on the Internationale. Apparently, we’re going to retread old ground. Notice what is missing from that list: a revolution of 1871. Unless she is going to make the case that the Franco-Prussian war is the Revolution, an odd case considering the war ends in January of 1871, I don’t see a revolution here. “ What then of its Internationalism? How far was the brotherhood of man which had constituted one its fundamental doctrines to avail as a barrier against militarism?” She gives us a fair point; was the Internationale ...